In the winter of 1673, Marget Bigland, a resident of Shetland, was brought before the authorities at the age of fifty to answer to accusations of witchcraft. The legal documentation surrounding her case—recorded in the Register of the Privy Council—presents a complex web of familial connections, suggesting that Marget belonged to a lineage deeply entangled in the judicial scrutiny of the period. Historical records indicate that she may have been the daughter of a woman named Sunna Voe, while Marget herself was the mother of Molphrie Porteous.
Although the specific nature of the allegations brought against Marget remains obscured by the limitations of the surviving trial notes, her appearance in the records on January 16, 1673, marks her as one of the many individuals subjected to the formal legal machinery of the seventeenth-century Scottish witch trials. While the archival entry is noted for its complexity regarding the relationships between this group of women, it serves as a significant marker of Marget’s position within her community during a time when such accusations frequently bridged generations of the same family.